Year: 2011

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Love-Child Scandal Leak Came From Maria Shriver

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Hell hath no fury, et cetera:

The Arnold Schwarzenegger baby drama story was leaked to the media by Maria Shriver’s own people … and they did it because Maria was so angry at Arnold, she wanted to do it herself. . . .
We’re told when Maria found out that Arnold was the father of Mildred Patty Baena’s son, she was “hysterical” and wanted to hold a news conference blowing the lid off the scandal.
We’re told Maria’s friends talked her off a ledge and a plan was eventually hatched to leak the details to the L.A. Times and TMZ.

Maria has hired a private investigator for her divorce case.

LIVE AT FIVE – 05.25.11

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TOP NEWS
Violent Storms Kill Seven In Oklahoma, Kansas

Deadly storms rage through Midwest just two days after Joplin tornado

Five dead in Oklahoma City, suburbs from rush-hour tornado; two killed by falling tree in rural Kansas as more storms rip Midwest just days after destruction in Joplin



Netanyahu Cheered During Speech To Congress
Frequently interrupted by standing O’s, Israeli PM lays out his vision for peace: a strong Israel

New US Sanctions Target Iran’s Refined Petroleum Imports For First Time
Chavez’ PDVSA hardest hit



POLITICS
Democrats Claim Medicare The Key To Victory In NY-26

Congressman-elect Kathy Hochul

Behold the power of the fully-operational narrative!

John Edwards Faces Indictment For Campaign Violations

Advocates Call For More Sidewalks, Bike Lanes

Christie Blasts NJ Supremes On School Funding Ruling

Biden Aims For $1 Trillion In Budget Cuts, Opens Medicare Debate

Blagojevich Defense To Call Rahm Emanuel, Jesse Jackson Jr. As Witnesses



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
BRIC Nations Unhappy With European Dominance Of IMF
Russian Internet Firm Leads IPO Pack
AIG Stock Sale Raises $8.7 Billion; Feds Still Own 77% Of Company
Barnes & Noble Simplifies The Nook
Dollar, Yen Advance As Stock Market Declines Boost Demand For Safer Assets
Smucker Raises Coffee Prices; Folger’s, Dunkin Donuts Among Store Brands Affected
Twitter Acquires TweetDeck
Google To Unveil Mobile Payments Platform
Why Amazon Is Preparing To Enter An Overcrowded Tablet Market



SPORTS
Experience Matters As Heat Nail Down Win In Game 4

LeBron James drives for the basket in Game 4

Heat win again, 101-93 in OT

Canucks’ Power Line Delivers In Game 5

UConn Men: Academic Performance A Total Joke

Lakers Make Offer To Mike Brown



Dodgers Freshmen Show Their Class In Win Over Astros

Quentin’s Three Dingers Lead Chisox To Damp Victory

Adam Jones’ Sayonara Shot Lifts O’s Over Royals



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Maria Shriver’s People Behind Bastard Leaks

Ugh.

Friends talked her out of taking point on story, leaking to media instead.

Anna Kournikova Replaces Jillian Michaels On “Biggest Loser”



Oprah Winfrey’s Final Guest Revealed

“Dancing With The Stars” Crowns A Winner

“Glee” Star Jane Lynch Top Pick To Host Emmy Awards

Chelsea Handler Not A Fan Of “Teen Mom” Penomenon

FOREIGNERS
Volcanic Ash Cloud Nears Germany
IMF Chief To Attempt Consent Defense Against Rape Charges
Mubarak Faces Murder Charges
Yemeni Loyalists Spar With Tribal Forces – Using Machine Guns



BLOGS & STUFF
Republican Redefined: Netanyahu Says To Congress “This Is Real Democracy”
Dave Weigel: Rand Paul’s Absence Not Snub To Netanyahu
Jonah Goldberg: Run, Paul, Run
Ramesh Ponnuru: don’t Underestimate Republicans In 2012
Atlas Shrugs: Facebook Fascism?
Lonely Conservative: Study Shows Liberal Historians Routinely Deprecate Republican Presidents
American Digest: And All The News Just Repeats Itself
Transterrestrial Musings: Two Can Play at That Game

— compiled by Wombat-socho

NY-26 ELECTION NIGHT HQ
UPDATE: Democrat Hochul Wins

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12:30 a.m. ET: The predicted spin from the New York Times:

Democrats scored an upset in one of New York’s most conservative Congressional districts on Tuesday, dealing a blow to the national Republican Party in a race that largely turned on the party’s plan to overhaul Medicare.

11:45 p.m. ET: Erick Erickson at Red State:

The truth of the matter is that the Republican Party of New York sucks and has sucked for a while. It is especially terrible at special elections where the out of touch party leaders pick state legislators who everyone hates and runs them.
Jane Corwin is a sitting member of the NY State Legislature, just like Jim Tedisco, just like Dede Scozzafava, and she was handpicked by the party elders. Notice a trend?

Good points. This election was anomalous, as I said earlier today. With 97% of precincts reporting, Jack Davis’s vote (9,495) is more than double Democrat Kathy Hochul’s 4,694 margin over Corwin. However, the impact of Davis’s phony “Tea Party” candidacy — like the blunders of the New York GOP — will be all but ignored as the MSM spins NY-26 as a huge Democrat triumph of national significance.

10:45 p.m. ET: Now that it’s over — Jane Corwin has conceded, as Jazz Shaw reports — let me say a few words to the Republican Party of New York.

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?

In the middle of a recession, why would you nominate an heiress for Congress? Not to play class-warfare here, but do you really think that it helps the GOP win over hard-pressed blue-collar voters when you run a candidate who inherited part of a $4o0 million fortune? You think folks can relate to that?

And why, Republican Party of New York, if you were going to insist on nominating Jane Corwin for this special election, couldn’t you have at least done something to keep David Bellavia on the GOP team? Bellavia’s endorsement of Jack Davis hurt you guys pretty bad, but your campaign was so generally mismanaged that maybe you didn’t notice.

So now we have to listen to Democrats gloat about what a huge setback this is to the conservative movement when, as we all know, it’s just further proof of the incompetence of the Republican Party of New York — as if we needed further proof!

UPDATE 10:14 p.m. ET: It’s over. With 75% of precincts reporting, and Democrat Kathy Hochul leading by nearly 5,000 votes — 48%-42% — she has been declared the winner over Republican Jane Corwin. Third-party spoiler Jack Davis’s vote total will be greater than Hochul’s margin of victory.

With 469 (75%) of 627 precincts reporting:

Kathy Hochul (Democrat) . . . . . . 39,492 (48%)
Jane Corwin (Republican) . . . . . . 34,553 (42%)
Jack Davis (Crazy) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6,722 (8%)

UPDATE 9:50 p.m. ET: Still no precincts reporting from Genesee or Orleans counties. Hochul’s lead of about 2,700 votes is coming entirely from Erie County.

UPDATE 9:45 p.m. ET: With 345 (55%) of 627 precincts reporting:

Kathy Hochul (Democrat) . . . . . . 29,063 (48%)
Jane Corwin (Republican) . . . . . . 26,277 (43%)
Jack Davis (Crazy) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,090 (8%)

UPDATE 9:37 p.m. ET: With 210 (33%) of 627 precincts reporting:

Kathy Hochul (Democrat) . . . . . . 18,022 (48%)
Jane Corwin (Republican) . . . . . . 16,033 (42%)
Jack Davis (Crazy) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,369 (9%)

UPDATE 9:33 p.m. ET: Looking at the county-by-county results, I notice that so far we haven’t gotten any results from Genesee (53 precincts), Orleans (32 precincts) or Wyoming (40 precincts) counties.

UPDATE 9:28 p.m. ET: With 87 (14%) of 627 precincts reporting:

Kathy Hochul (Democrat) . . . . . . 7,393 (46%)
Jane Corwin (Republican) . . . . . . 7,004 (43%)
Jack Davis (Crazy) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,644 (10%)

Linked by The Lonely Conservative — thanks!

UPDATE 9:23 p.m. ET: With 20 (3%) of 627 precincts reporting:

Kathy Hochul (Democrat) . . . . . . 3,098 (46%)
Jane Corwin (Republican) . . . . . . 2,811 (42%)
Jack Davis (Crazy) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 790 (12%)

UPDATE 9:05 p.m. ET: The Buffalo News will be the go-to source for live election results, and they’ve also got the vote breakdown county-by-county.

PREVIOUSLY: Polls close at 9 p.m. ET in the special election to fill the seat vacated by Chris Lee in New York’s 26th District. We will have complete results and analysis.

Dave Weigel, who traveled to the district to cover the closing week of the campaign, is liveblogging at Slate. Jessica Taylor is liveblogging at National Journal.

Jazz Shaw has an open thread at Hot Air, and notes that Republican Jane Corwin has already gone to court to prevent an early certification of tonight’s results.

PREVIOUSLY:

Giuliani 2012? Crazy.

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You gotta be kidding me. Rudy Giuliani raised and spent tens of millions of dollars, sucked up vast volumes of media oxygen and won exactly one delegate during his 2008 Republican presidential primary campaign.

That Rudy would be considering a run in 2012 is absurd, and anyone who takes this seriously is daft.

You know what this is about? It’s the same thing as the bogus Trump-for-president campaign. This is about New York-based media wanting a New York-area political celebrity candidate to write about — something to sell copies of the New York Post and the Daily Mail. If they can’t talk Chris Christie into a running, they’ll try to gin up a phony “Giuliani 2012” groundswell.

NY-26 Election Day: Are Crazy Jack’s Supporters Breaking Toward Democrat?

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Jazz Shaw points out in the Hot Air Green Room that, contrary to some expectations, the erosion of fake “Tea Party” candidate Jack Davis’s support has not translated to poll gains for Republican Jane Corwin. This adds doubt to Politico‘s prediction that a low vote for Crazy Jack would necessarily portend a Corwin victory in today’s New York congressional election.

But what Jazz points out is, upon reflection, quite logical: Jack Davis ran as a Democrat three times — in 2004, 2006 and 2008 — and it only makes sense that most of his “soft” support would be Democratic voters. Once these voters became aware that Kathy Hochul was the actual Democrat candidate in the 26th District special election, most of them quite naturally switched their preference to her.

Therefore, those voters who actually do vote for Crazy Jack — however small their number — will come almost entirely from the ranks of Republican voters or independents who, in most years, lean toward the GOP. Jazz correctly points out that it is still impossible to predict tonight’s outcome:

As Nate Silver pointed out this week, polling single House races for a special election is notoriously difficult. Turnout is almost uniformly low compared to a general election, particularly when a governorship or the presidency is on the line. Low turnout races increase the margin of error, and while this race is likely to still be very close, it could flip either way by tonight.

This was something I kept pointing out last fall: Polling a congressional race is harder than polling a statewide election or a presidential election, and a low-turnout election like this one will hinge on which party can get its voters to the polls.

It’s not particularly encouraging that the Republican Party of New York is so incompetent as to allow their volunteer phone bank to be infiltrated by leftist provocateurs.

More news at Memeorandum. Polls in NY-26 close tonight at 9 p.m. If you live there, vote Corwin. And we’ll have the results tonight.

PREVIOUSLY:

News From the HuffPo ‘Veal Pen’

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In 2009, lefty blogger Jane Hamsher used the phrase “veal pen” to describe the way liberals had surrendered their autonomy to the Obama administration.

Lefty blogger Matt Osborne invoked the phrase while describing his decision to delete his archived articles at Huffington Post:

I see the point many of the 9,000 or so unpaid contributors have made about deserving some kind of compensation, even at a token rate per post, as thanks for building the product she has sold for a fortune. But it wasn’t personal avarice that led me to this; I don’t desire any part of Arianna Huffington’s AOL millions, for in my mind that money is cursed. Just ask Ted Turner.
Instead, my participation in HuffPuff — the growing online rebellion against Arianna and her newly-mintworthy media empire that began at the Adbusters website in February — is the culmination of many months of disillusionment and growing disgust. The sale of Huffington Post represents exactly the sort of “veal pen captivation scheme” that firebagging lefties constantly project on anyone with the temerity to question their paranoid conspiracy theories and character assassinations.

Exactly what Osborne intends to signify by the expression “firebagging lefties,” I’m not sure. Obsorne seems to have an overblown sense of his own importance, and his interpretations of Arianna Huffington’s politics are dubious. Nevertheless, Osborne is correct that what Huffington sold to AOL was a readership, including readers of  uncompensated contributors such as himself. Rather than filing lawsuits against HuffPo, however, he has asserted his own autonomy by deleting his previous HuffPo contributions (transferring the posts to his own domain) and encouraging others to do the same.

Let Arianna choke on her ill-gotten gains. Just don’t let her claim ownership of your uncompensated work. Ayn Rand would understand.

Dept. of Bad Analogies

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“Last Friday, Kansas legislators approved a ban on insurance companies offering abortion coverage as part of their general health plans.”

This is in itself problematic. I’m pro-life, but I don’t like the idea of government bossing around insurance companies, telling them who and what they should or should not cover. And this description of the rationale behind the bill seems confusing:

If the bill becomes law as expected, starting in July, individuals and employers who want abortion coverage would have to buy supplemental policies that cover only abortion. Supporters of the bill argue that it will protect employers who oppose abortion rights from having to pay for policies that cover the procedures.

But don’t different companies offer different policies? I mean, if an employer didn’t want to provide abortion coverage, couldn’t the employer shop around to find a company that offered the kind of coverage he wanted? There must be some background to this story I don’t understand.

Whatever the policy logic of this law, it doesn’t help the pro-life cause to have it defended by idiots:

Rep. Barbara Bollier, a Mission Hills Republican who supports abortion rights, questioned whether women would buy abortion-only policies long before they have crisis or unwanted pregnancies or are rape victims.
During the House’s debate, Rep. Pete DeGraaf, a Mulvane Republican who supports the bill, told her: “We do need to plan ahead, don’t we, in life?”
Bollier asked him, “And so women need to plan ahead for issues that they have no control over with a pregnancy?”
DeGraaf drew groans of protest from some House members when he responded, “I have spare tire on my car.”
“I also have life insurance,” he added. “I have a lot of things that I plan ahead for.”

“Groans of protest,” indeed. A much better argument: The fee for a first-trimester abortion isn’t so steep as to be prohibitive to the uninsured. It is a relatively inexpensive procedure. This is also a valid argument against taxpayer subsidies for abortion providers like Planned Parenthood: Even if you are enthusiastically “pro-choice,” there is no compelling economic need that justifies such subsidies.

Exactly why the Kansas legislature felt the need to interfere this way with the insurance companies, I don’t know. But spare us the spare-tire analogies.

Never Burn a Source

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Nothing is more essential to a newsman’s craft than trust. If your sources can’t trust you to keep a secret, they’re not going to tell you everything you need to know, because sometimes you need to know more than you can actually report. Therefore, to breach confidentiality — to burn a source by reporting what were supposed to be off-the-record conversations — is to destroy the kind of trust that is necessary to the practice of your trade.

At the Daily Caller, Jonathan Strong has done something vaguely akin to burning a source: He published confidential Twitter direct messages between Sarah Palin spokeswoman Rebecca Mansour and someone else.

We learn from Ben Smith that the source for Strong’s “scoop” had previously tried to sell this information. Smith says he refused to pay, but wanted the scoop:

“Does Politico pay for exclusives? Cause I’m looking to sell. I have 122 direct messages from Sarah Palin staffer Rebecca Mansour,” the person emailed, eventually sending along sample direct messages identical to a couple the Caller posted. They were forwarded from the account of one improbably named Toki de la Vega, a contributor to some pro-Palin sites, though there was a man’s name attached to one of the tweets as well.
I responded with a counter-offer of lunch and “undying gratitude.”
“Sorry, Ben, but it’s going to take more than a happy meal and a hand shake to get me to betray someone’s confidence. Only freshly printed 100 dollar bills help me get over feelings of guilt,” wrote the emailer, who continued, “Would it violate some fake journalistic ethics and standards to get me in contact someone who does pay? I know that the thought of blogging about this is making your panties wet. The topics range from Chuck Hagel to Ricky Hollywood and everything else in between. It’s a f***ing blogger’s gold mine.”

Good Lord! If I went to press with every unguarded opinion expressed privately to me by political operatives, what untold havoc could I wreak? But that havoc would be short-lived, of course, because once a reporter burns a source, nobody would ever trust him again. Ed Morrissey writes:

Well, having been around a few election cycles, I can attest that every campaign likes to push negative information about their opponents.  I’ve probably received a couple of those types of messages already this morning, and I’m sure I’ll get more by the end of the day, too.  “Leaking damaging information” is what they do.  Being shocked by that, or even considering it news, is approaching Captain Louis Renault territory.

Agreed. And I will add that it has been observed by more than a few conservatives that the only time the Daily Caller ever seems to get a scoop, it is a scoop that damages conservatives.  Continue reading Never Burn a Source →